Alice maintained her composure. "I haven't an idea."
He paused. "I will tell you how much, since you're so very superior to the subject. Just twice as much as we spent the first five years we were married."
"Quite a difference, isn't it?"
"It is--quite a difference. And the difference is reckless extravagance. You seem to have lost your head."
"Suppose it is reckless extravagance! What do you mean to say--that I spent all the money? This establishment is of your choosing, isn't it? And have you spent nothing? How do you expect to move in a circle of people such as live around this lake without reckless extravagance?"
"By using a little common-sense in your expenditures."
For some moments they wrangled over various details of the ménage. Alice at length cut the purposeless recrimination short. "You spoke of the first five years we were married. You know I spent literally nothing the first five years of our married life. You continually said you were trying 'to build up.' That was your cry from morning till night, and like a dutiful wife, I wore my own old clothes for the first two years. Then the next three years I wore made-over hats and hunted up ready-made suits to enable you to 'build up.'"
"Yes," he muttered, "and we were a good deal happier then than we are now."
She made an impatient gesture. "Do speak for yourself, Walter. You were happier, no doubt. I can't remember that you ever gave me any chance to be happy."
"Too bad about you. You look like a poor, unhappy thing--half-fed and half-clothed."